{"id":1374111,"date":"2022-03-13T10:11:08","date_gmt":"2022-03-13T14:11:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1374111"},"modified":"2022-03-13T10:11:15","modified_gmt":"2022-03-13T14:11:15","slug":"ukraines-only-woman-rabbi-among-the-many-jews-fleeing-russian-invasion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/ukraines-only-woman-rabbi-among-the-many-jews-fleeing-russian-invasion\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine\u2019s Only Woman Rabbi Among the Many Jews Fleeing Russian Invasion"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">22<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fukraines-only-woman-rabbi-among-the-many-jews-fleeing-russian-invasion%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1374111&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p class=\"subheading\">WARSAW, Poland (AP) \u2014 On her first Shabbat away from the fighting in Ukraine, Rabbi Julia Gris twice led services to welcome the Jewish holy day.<\/p>\n<p>A week earlier, Ukraine\u2019s only woman rabbi had been fleeing the war that scattered her Odesa congregation from Moldova to Romania and Israel. Some stayed behind, braving the Russian shelling.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"D-ROS-B1\" class=\"a8d\"><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B1\" class=\"a8d\"><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"gmxrevmore\" class=\"H\"><\/figure>\n<p>She first led an online service for those congregants scattered abroad. Then, she officiated one in person for a small group in Poland, taken in by a Christian couple near Warsaw.<\/p>\n<p>Gris lit sabbath candles that she had carried from Ukraine, while her 19-year-old daughter Izolda played the guitar and sang, just as she had during services back home in the her Reform community, Shirat ha-Yam.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere were so many stories, so much crying and so much pain,\u201d Gris said. \u201cFor those who are here, and even more so for those still in Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B2\" class=\"a8d\"><\/figure>\n<p>Gris and her daughter found safety after a 30 kilometer (20 mile) walk lugging suitcases and their two cats, reaching the border with Poland where they negotiated a 40-hour wait without food, water or toilets.<\/p>\n<p>The mother and daughter are part of the exodus from Ukraine that has become the fastest-growing humanitarian crisis in Europe since World War II.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_20204216\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/media.breitbart.com\/media\/2022\/03\/1000-1-1.jpeg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em>Leonid Katsiv, right, a 44-year-old Jewish man from Ukraine, walks with his children at a center where the Social and Cultural Association of Jews in Poland is providing shelter and food to Jewish and non-Jewish refugees in Otwock, Poland, Saturday, March 12, 2022. Many Jews are among the more than 2.5 million people who have fled Ukraine. (AP Photo\/Czarek Sokolowski)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>With some 200,000 Jews in Ukraine, one of the world\u2019s largest Jewish communities, it is inevitable that many Jewish people are also among those fleeing.<\/p>\n<p>International Jewish organizations have mobilized to help, working with local Jewish communities in Poland, Romania, Moldova and elsewhere to organize food, shelter, medical care and other assistance.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B3\" class=\"a8d adSo\"><\/figure>\n<p>The reality that so many Jews have joined the mass civilian exit from Ukraine exposes the deceitfulness of Russian claims that it\u2019s there to \u201cdenazify\u201d Ukraine. In truth, Ukraine has steadily grown into a pluralistic society, led by a Jewish president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy is a Russian regime that claims to be \u201cdenazifying\u201d Ukraine brutalizing a country led by a democratically elected and proud Jew?\u201d said David Harris, the CEO of the American Jewish Committee (AJC), who visited Poland this week to assess the needs of refugees. \u201cWhy is Moscow adopting Nazi-like tactics of the 1930s \u2014 fake history, phony grievances, blitzkrieg, attacks on civilians and civilian institutions, and murder of children?\u201d<\/p>\n<figure id=\"D-ROS-B2\" class=\"a8d\"><\/figure>\n<p>Gris said she always felt very much at home in Ukraine, a Russian-born Jew who had never felt discrimination.<\/p>\n<p>Now Russia\u2019s invasion has plunged the country into an acute humanitarian crisis affecting Jews and non-Jews alike. Jewish organizations say they are there to help all refugees irrespective of faith. But for some Jews, the organizations\u2019 involvement is essential to helping them emigrate to Israel or stay true to their faith\u2019s observances, for instance by getting kosher food.<\/p>\n<p>Aside from the AJC there are others helping. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), a New York-based Jewish humanitarian organization, has so far evacuated thousands of Jews to Moldova and helped several thousand more after they reached Poland and other countries.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B4\" class=\"a8d adSo\"><\/figure>\n<p>Poland\u2019s chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich, said some of the Jewish refugees plan to go to Israel while others intend to join family in countries like Germany or Britain. Others, he said, \u201chave to figure out what to do with their lives \u2014 do they want to settle in Poland or elsewhere?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The dark historical irony isn\u2019t lost on Schudrich. Eight decades ago, Jews desperately tried to flee German-occupied Poland and other eastern European countries under Nazi German rule. Six million of them were exterminated.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_20204222\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/1000-2-1.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-20204222\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/1000-2-1.jpeg\" alt=\"David Harris, the CEO of the American Jewish Committee, a Jewish advocacy, speaks to The Associated Press during a visit to Poland to assess the needs of refugees, in Otwock, Poland, Saturday March 12, 2022. Jews are among the more than 1.5 million people to flee the war in Ukraine. The AJC is one of several international Jewish organizations which have mobilized to help, working with local Jewish communities in Poland, Romania, Moldova and elsewhere to organize food, shelter, medical care and other assistance. (AP Photo\/Czarek Sokolowski)\" width=\"1000\" height=\"703\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em>David Harris, the CEO of the American Jewish Committee, a Jewish advocacy, speaks to The Associated Press during a visit to Poland to assess the needs of refugees, in Otwock, Poland, Saturday March 12, 2022.\u00a0 (AP Photo\/Czarek Sokolowski)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u201cThe struggles that people had, the splitting up of families, saying goodbye and never knowing if you would see each other again, and most times you didn\u2019t,\u201d Schudrich said. \u201cAnd to think now that Jews and others are not fleeing out of Poland but into Poland, and we, the small Jewish community of Poland, can now welcome them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Gris is awaiting a sponsorship letter in hopes of going to the U.K. She was ordained a rabbi at the Leo Baeck College in London and has friends and colleagues there who are supporting her.<\/p>\n<p>Wearing a sequined kippa and a ribbon pinned to her chest in the blue and yellow of Ukraine\u2019s flag, Gris said that she never experienced anti-Semitism in her 22 years of living in Ukraine.<\/p>\n<p>It was the fact that she was Russian that made her nervous after Russian troops attacked Ukraine on Feb. 24. Friends advised her that she would be better off leaving. Ukrainian authorities froze her bank account \u2014 a step taken against Russian and Belarusian citizens. At the border, she said Ukrainian guards asked, \u201chow do we know you\u2019re not a spy?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Gris said she could understand that reaction from a nation under attack, but it still hurt because \u201cmy heart and soul is with Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Gris, 45, was born in Bryansk, Russia, before the breakup of the Soviet Union. She embarked on her spiritual journey as a teenager at a time of a broader revival of Jewish life in eastern Europe. Judaism, like other religions, had been suppressed by the the officially atheistic ideology of the communist era.<\/p>\n<p>In her youth she was told by a rabbi that she was so wise that she could even aspire to being a rabbi\u2019s wife. But she said to herself: \u201cNo, I will be a rabbi myself.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Gris doesn\u2019t know where the war will lead but fears that Jewish life will never be the same there.<\/p>\n<p>On Saturday, her second Shabbat in safety, she was joined in Warsaw by a member of her Odesa congregation \u2014 two thirds of whom have fled now \u2014 a reunion that was comforting to them both.<\/p>\n<p>She denounced Russian propaganda, and recounted how her own mother, who is still in Russia, didn\u2019t believe that Russia attacked Ukraine. \u201cI had to tell her yes, I can hear the sirens and the bombs myself!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Now she feels her life in Odesa may be lost forever. \u201cI don\u2019t know when I can go back,\u201d Gris said fighting back tears. \u201cOr if I will go back.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WARSAW, Poland (AP) \u2014 On her first Shabbat away from the fighting in Ukraine, Rabbi Julia Gris twice led services to welcome the Jewish holy day. A week earlier, Ukraine\u2019s<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1374111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1374111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1374111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1374111\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1374111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1374111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1374111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}